Pi

Ruby Brooch Trinkets Metalworkers from the Ashfall Waste use cold lava and rubies from Dragonhome to make brooches like this one. Merchants like to wear these to show their wealth. (Special thanks to Duveteux!) 20 Analogous Pigment Blend Organics This peculiar pigment blend has the unusual ability to match the tint of whatever it is applied to. 42 Tiny Feathers Organics A pair of soft, downy feathers. If you had these in a greater quantity they could be quite useful... 21

Pi serves the clan as Matron of the Maeir - Officially the House of Mercy, the original name still lingers from before the Restructuring - the Froslands' medical system. Though her official title places the responsibility of running the House on her, Pi tends to leave most administrative duties to her management team so that she can spend her time in the wards or teaching. She is also responsible for upholding a modern and continuously advancing standard of care within the Froslands, which requires her to frequently visit both the hospitals within the Froslands to ensure they are providing proper care, and outside of the territory to learn new techniques that she can bring home. Mahina assists her in this role, often taking her place on visits so that Pi will not be stretched too thin, particularly now that the advancing field of engineering has become keenly relevant to the medical world. She/Her - Too Tired to Care - Ancient

Personality and Relationships:
While she is a highly experienced and respected doctor, Pi is also described by everyone who meets her as a grump. Gruff, unshakeably strict, and constantly over-worked, it can be hard to believe that she ever had a soft side. However under her stony hide, Pi has a very warm heart. She is greatly empathetic and will exhaust herself caring for her patients before she even considers stopping to look after her own needs. Additionally, she is highly protective of her students, colleagues, and her ward.

Though Pi struggles socially and often finds it hard to relate to other dragons, she tries her best to make time for her friends in her time off. Sometimes she can grow frustrated with the personal drama of her colleagues and will be dismissive of their emotions, but she will usually approach them after work regardless and let them talk their problems through with her.

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Corsodyl Adopted Ward

Corsodyl, as her ward, is one of Pi's favourite dragons. The two are very close, and Pi greatly enjoys bringing Corsodyl to work with her when circumstances permit, though he will often end up baby-sat by Elumia while Pi deals with emergencies. Pi adopted Corsodyl after he came into her wards, orphaned and injured by the Harpy Wars. Initially, she attempted to find him a foster family once he was discharged from her care. However, the little coatl had grown strongly attached to her (and her to him) during the months she spent treating him, and separating from him proved impossible once a viable family finally volunteered to take him. Though Pi does not want to push Corsodyl into any one path in life, she does hope that he might choose to follow in her footsteps rather than become a warrior. For now, however, that is a worry for the distant future, and the hatchling is perfectly happy earning his pocketmoney fetching bandages and salves for his guardian.

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Mahina Right Hand

Mahina is Pi's 'second in command', and one of her most trusted friends. The two met frequently during their childhood, whenever the Plague and Earth sects of the Order of the Crimson Wing would visit each other. As such, they are able to share in secrets about their pasts that neither have dared to disclose to their other colleagues.

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Elumia Protégé

Elumia is among Pi's most achieved students, and now is her colleague. Having known each other for so long, Elumia views Pi almost as her grumpy aunt and isn't afraid to tease her over it. While Pi often grumbles over 'the lack of respect' that the younger dragon shows her, in truth Elumia views Pi with great reverence, and when dealing with serious matters trusts fully in the older dragon's judgement. She won't admit it, but Pi enjoys having Elumia around, and not just because her work is good.

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Noc Nuisance

Both experts in their fields, Noc and Pi bicker constantly. Mostly over Noc's frequent attempts to take over the hospital, where he goes so far as to try to give orders to Mahina. Despite this, Pi bears a grudging respect for the medic, and does enjoy spending time with him in the off-shift as their dry senses of humour mesh well. They just avoid talking about work when they meet up at Powell's in the evening.

History:
Pi was raised by the Order of the Crimson Wing (a clan of healers in Dragonhome) and has pracitced in both the mystical and scientific medical arts since childhood. It was a humble but happy life, dedicated to helping injured dragons and beastclans alike. However, as Pi grew and lost the naivety of childhood, she began to grow suspicious of her clan's true intentions.

Patients, often the poor and lost, would frequently disappear from the wards with little explanation. Unwilling to distrust the clan who had hatched her, Pi initially ignored the symptoms of corruption. She hoped that if she kept her head down and didn't pry, then the reality behind the clan wouldn't be true. Ironically, it was this behaviour that brought her to the elders' attention. Pi's lack of interest in the disappearances caused them to believe that she could be trusted with the Order's secrets, and they invited her to learn the truth.

Pi does not talk about what she witnessed that night. She left her homeland in self-imposed exile, and is too afraid to return.

Stripped of everything she had ever known, Pi decided to travel to the Southern Icefields - the one place on Sornieth she knew to be beyond the Crimson Wing's reach. There she joined a new, small clan and eventually became a founding member of the Frostguard.



Hobbies:
When she isn't working, Pi enjoys spending time with her young ward, Corsodyl. Once he has gone to bed, she will usually meet up with her colleagues at Powell's inn so that they can all unwind together after the stress of the work day.

Outside of her humble social life, Pi also collects singing stones from Dragonhome. Her most prized pebble was gifted to her by Corsodyl (with Elumia's help), and was the very first in her now vast collection. She also enjoys caring for her pet molluscs, which she has a habit of adopting whenever she sees them wandering too far from the Frosthold's deep rivers.



Pi's wards were overflowing; spare beds lined the corridors and spilled into offices, store rooms and even her own private quarters. Winter had announced its arrival as spectacularly as ever, biting its freezing teeth into the flesh and bone of unprepared dragons.

Many of her patients were new to the Icefields; Mahina had even begun to joke that the season was their Division's yearly meet-and-greet with all the fresh faces. Pi, however, did not share the optimistic sentiment; many of these new names weren't worth learning; winter in the Icefields was as deadly as it was beautiful. Despite countless hours of work holding seminars, posting fliers, and slipping horror stories into the far-reaching rumour mill, few dragons listened to her warnings until their chests were filled with pneumonia.

The ailments themselves were not the issue; she could treat frost bite in her sleep. Rather, it was the numbers. They drained their stocks of medicine dry, and exhausted the final dregs of their magic - Elumia had already passed out in one of the rare spare cots, never far from her patients even at the cost of her own wellbeing, and half of their fastest dragons had been pulled from duty just to make endless supply runs between the Hold and ever-further trading posts as stocks all across the Icefields ran dry.

A heavy sigh left the piebald matron as she slumped against her cluttered desk, awaiting the next alarming cry of yet another oncoming patient. She was growing good at predicting them, from her years of service to the Frostguard, and sure enough Hielo had already been dispatched to collect a poor young drake from their foolish attempt to hike the mountainside in a blizzard. Even their thickest-furred, Ice-born tundras stayed at home in this weather.

A short tug on her coat pulled Pi's attention to the floor, where bright Lightning eyes, framed by tidy pistachio down, stared up at her. The sight of her young ward never failed to bring a smile to Pi's face.

"Hello, Cor." With a gentle care unique to healing hands, she ruffled his tiny head of feathers, grooming the pinstriped fluff into a chaotic collection of odd angles. The little Coatl purred his joy at the attention, and used it as an invitation to clamber up onto Pi's weary shoulders, albeit more clumsily than usual by virtue of a little package grasped in his claws.

"What do you have there?" Pi tapped a claw against the brightly-wrapped bundle that Corsodyl cradled, only to find it shoved into her broad palm.

"It's for you! Open it!" Green featheres bristled outwards as the hatchling's impatience threatened to burst free of his tiny body; a gesture that sent a jolt of panic through Pi's spine as the hum of static electricity began to sing within the excitable Lightning dragon's plumage.

In a flash, the paper wrapping was gone, revealing a little, smooth gemstone, unmistakably unique to Dragonhome. Pi's breath froze in her chest as an onslaught of memories hit her with the brute force of a sledge hammer, leaving behind a bitter, mixed aftertaste that, with one glance at Corsodyl's hopeful face, faded away until all that remained was a soft appreciation for her long-ago home.

"Thank you, Cor. But where did you get this?" She rolled the stone around her palm, and felt her wings droop, relaxed, as the Earthen magic nestled at its core sung in harmony with her own. She was surprised, however, to recieve a tiny, offended gasp in response to her question.

"Elumia says it's supposed to be secret!" Something told Pi that Elumia had helped in the stone's aquisition. She was unfamiliar with many of the Icefield's traditions, and those she had learned had been the ones her patients and students had insisted she participate in. She had heard of this practise from Elumia's many, many nostalgiac stories of her childhood, where hatchlings were encouraged to trade small gifts with each other and their carers during the coldest months to bring warmth to their hearts. She had not, however, considered that Corsodyl would learn about it too.

"Very well. Now go fetch me some more poultice from Ars, will you?" Ever the enthusiastic hatchling, Corsodyl was gone with a happy nod of his head and the loud scrabbles, flaps, and clatters of practise bounds. Icewarden help her when he finally learned to fly.

Pi looked down at the stone again, barely a pebble in her huge paw, and grinned as a small burst of magic set it chiming.

Winter in the Southern Icefields was brutal, but perhaps it wasn't as bad as Pi had thought.